Disability and...Changes in the Visual Arts Sector with Mike Layward

Show Notes

This month, DAO Founding Editor Colin Hambrook chats with Disability Arts Shropshire's (DASH) recently-retired Artistic Director Mike Layward about changes within the visual arts sector that he's observed over his 25 years with DASH. 

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The Disability And…Podcast gets right to the heart of some of the most pressing issues in arts, culture and beyond with a series of bold, provocative and insightful interviews with disabled artists, key industry figures and the odd legend. The Disability and…Podcast is currently monthly.

Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Disability And... podcast, bringing together thoughtful discussion and debate. This month, Disability Arts Online's Senior Editor Colin Hambrook chats with DASH's recently-retired Chief Executive Officer Mike Layward about some of the events DASH have put on, and the changes in the sector that he's observed over his 25 years with Dash.

Colin Hambrook 0:32
Hi, and welcome to the Disability And... podcast. I'm Colin Hambrook, the Founding Editor of Disability Arts Online, and I'm really delighted this month to welcome Mike Laywood, who was the CEO, Artistic Director of DASH for over, over 20 years. And, Mike, do you want to introduce yourself?

Mike Layward 1:00
Yeah, morning, Colin, it's lovely to be here. I feel like I'm in the illustrious place that many, many great stabled artists and activists have been down. So I feel very humbled to be here. Yeah, so I suppose a quick intro on myself: I was artistic director of DASH from 1999, which seems such a long time ago. And I retired from that role in, this year, in September, because it seemed like, like it, the Arts always needs a refresh and younger people coming through.

Mike Layward 1:38
I'd hit 70 in June, which is a bit hard to believe that, I think but I was in my 20s I never believed that I'd get into anything beyond the thirties, you know, live fast and die young. But it didn't happen, which I'm glad - I'm loving being 70. So now I'm an art student. And I'm still working for DASH as a freelancer for the time being, on their Future Curators programme, which is good, because I feel like you set up a piece of work. And it's it's good to better help it along, and then give have a proper handover period.

Colin Hambrook 2:13
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're going to talk about changes in the Visual Arts sector over the last 25 years or so. And to start off with, I wanted to ask you, what, what brought you into working in Disability Arts and, and working for DASH?

Mike Layward 2:37
You know, it's interesting when you look back over a big period of time. And it probably wasn't until about maybe about 2004/2005 that I realised that I was a disabled person, that I defined myself that way. Up to then, I had worked a lot with disabled people - particularly disabled young people - in all sorts of settings. But I never saw myself as a disabled person. I think it wasn't till I came into DASH, working for a disabled-led activist organisation, Shropshire Disability Consortium, learning about the medical model and the social model, did I come to understand my own life, looking back. Which is, I guess, not an unusual thing.

Colin Hambrook 3:22
No, it was similar for me as well, actually, in my, my journey. It took probably about six years for me to kind of realise that, that--that I--that I was also a disabled person and that the barriers that I had faced, had brought me into Disability Arts and made me excited about Disability Arts. Was that a similar thing for you?

Mike Layward 3:48
So coming into DASH was such a learning, and it's such a relief to be coming at it from such a different direction, and working for Shropshire Disability Consortium, I learned so much from the people working there. I guess I bought a participatory arts and community arts viewpoint into DASH and then mixing that into Disability Arts seemed to go really well with a sort of an empowerment and engagement side.

Colin Hambrook 4:19
And what was your connection with the Visual Arts?

Mike Layward 4:23
I worked, I had been working in the arts since, oh, the mid 70s. Mostly in participate--participatory performance, but then I started also doing things like running a silkscreen workshop, and got into carnival. So that sort of making/performance crossover and and then later on, I went and did a access course in Art and Design and started a Fine Art degree part time before I took the job at DASH. So, visual arts have always been an undercurrent there, mixed in with performance.

Colin Hambrook 5:03
Were there any particular pieces of work, or any particular artists from that time who kind of grabbed you and inspired you?

Mike Layward 5:15
Well, I was really lucky that Gary Robson had a long-time link with DASH. He directed some of the DASH festivals. Sort of, meeting Gary was great, because he sort of...he taught me loads, he was a great co-worker, he is very funny. He's also very challenging. And he introduced me to loads and loads of people, you know...people like Caroline Parker, you know, loads and loads of disabled performers. And I think he [Gary] just gave me a broad view of, of how Disability Arts was working at that time. And also, he was someone who was always -- he was a bad boy, he challenged things. He didn't accept the sort of status quo of the Disability Arts, which he did feel was a bit rigid at that time.

Colin Hambrook 6:04
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There was there was a sort of a sense, certainly, I think, towards the end of the 90s, where the code that you're meant to adhere to became--became more and more strict, and more and more people being being excluded from Disability Arts

Mike Layward 6:28
It was like Labour Party!

Colin Hambrook 6:31
Yeah! Yeah, it was, it was a bit like a Kier Starmer kind of conspiracy that was that was happening. I, I, I've fought against that from within London Disability Arts Forum. And, and it's the reason why I established Disability Arts Online. As you know, I wanted to free free things up.

Colin Hambrook 6:54
And I think...that was probably one of the first times we met I think, was in those days where I, I was kind of, I went, I kind of reached out to the Disability Sector at that time, and set up some some meetings and got it I got a bit of seed funding from from the Arts Council and set some meetings up. And we had a bit of a think-tank around what role Disability Arts Online could perform. That was kind of the beginning of the internet, really. And that was, that was really exciting that there was the kind of sense of possibility of how we could use the internet to network and to share disabled artists voices and to critique work. And and can you remember some of your first projects with with DASH?

Mike Layward 7:57
Yeah, it was funny because I came in as an inheritant of the old Arts Council, the arts, but it couldn't an Arts Council GB - but was Arts Council England - but it hadn't been regionalised in the way that the will the regions were independent, or they weren't independent, because they got all that that money for the Arts Council, but they were looking after their own funding. It was a National Fund and structured Disability Consortium and put in a clear programme. But when I arrived, I said, 'did I have to stick to it?' And the great answer was no, which was brilliant. Because it was always awful to have to do work that other people think is good, but you're not so excited.

Mike Layward 8:39
So one of the things I was really impressed with things like the Octopus Club that was just starting then. And I'd had done a little bit of work with Heart n Soul, who would come down to Barnstable and who'd blown people's minds like, they showed a film about one of their performers, being married, having a child. And it was definitely was upsetting some of the people on the committee, that the idea that any of their residents would go out and have sex. So it was brilliant - and I thought, 'Ah, here in a rural area, to have a touring nightclub will be great.' And luckily, I had a really big budget. Sp I just spent lots of money and did these, sort of, they couldn't be all nighters, but when they were running from about 7.30, till about 12/1 in the morning. Just sort of unknown, out here, that's happening like that, and getting a real mix of performers of poets, filmmakers, dance, theatre, having visual arts up there as well. So it was a big thing and then having accessible transport buses organised. It was a crazy idea, you know the budget got spent very quickly and we couldn't maintain the audience with the, you know, when you try something out, you hope it will get a sort of momentum and build up. But I guess, being in a rural area, that couldn't happen. Because it would---people from the urban areas, it was just, we weren't that well connected, say into Wolverhampton or Birmingham or even Manchester, so people weren't going to know about it or travel. But it was good, it connected, I think it connected us up regionally with a lot of different people.

Colin Hambrook 10:34
It sounds like a lot of fun as well! It reminds me, to be a little bit like the, your 2012 moment, with the, you know, the big sort of Rural Arts Festival you created with Aaron, Aaron Williamson and Katherine Araniello doing doing bizarre, wild things in ridiculous costumes.

Mike Layward 11:01
Yeah, that was quite an event. That was M21, fromm the medieval to the 21st century, in Much Wenlock. Because I lived in Much Wenlock for about, oh 10 years - and strange place - but it was the birthplace of the modern Olympics. And it was a stupid idea, to try to hold an event like that in, in a very, it is quite an isolated place--not easy transport links. But it was also brilliant as well.

Colin Hambrook 11:31
Yeah, yeah.

Mike Layward 11:32
Yeah, it was a really good event. And we had a little bit of stick because we didn't get massive audiences. And it was... in a sense, where WAIWAV, the idea for We Are Invisible, We Are Visible. There was definitely stuff laid down there, where we didn't do lots of promotion because we wanted a shock thing like, Noemi Lakmaier had two or three people who were, she was the baton in a race round town. So they would every so often, she would start the race by being pulled out of her chair and hiked over held by these, a man who had run round and pass her to another man, around the town. And people were coming up to the stewardess and saying, 'I just saw this woman in a wheelchair being hiked off and this man ran away with her!" [laughs] and, and so there was an element of that---what I love about anything in the streets, performance, that can be---people don't quite know what's real or not real.

Colin Hambrook 12:38
Disability Arts performance has been kind of central, really, to the evolution of of disability arts within the visual arts. What was that? Was that some...was that an opportunity that you, you kind of, sought to engage with from from quite early on?

Mike Layward 12:56
I've always liked Street Theatre and Live Art - and where that sort of street theatre is moved into live art. And I've always liked what, what the opportunity working in unusual spaces. And I think, I think at that time, you know, it's really only in the last 10, 14 years, that we've really started to get connected to galleries. Up til that time, we were very outside of the system of the visual arts - we had no connections, really, with any curators. To be honest, I didn't really understand how, properly, how the gallery system worked. Like a lot--I mean, a lot of artists I was mentoring in the last few years were in a similar position. It seems like an amazing, monolithic edifice, that you don't really understand how you would ever get the doors to creak open a little.

Colin Hambrook 13:53
What, what were your first attempts at connecting with those gatekeepers and and opening those those channels?

Mike Layward 14:01
Yeah, that was around about 2009, when we'd been doing a-- Tanya Raabewas working for DASH, then, as an employee. And she did a development programme with artists. And one of the questions, they said, how do I get my work shown in any of the regional galleries? And we realised that we didn't know how to do that. We didn't know anyone in those galleries. And we thought, 'we better start making some inroads here'. So we did go out in a very stroppy way, really, we had money---we were offering money. We went with the idea that they would hate us, they wouldn't like us.

Mike Layward 14:38
And so we went in a quite a, sort of activist, angry way. We had to sort of repair stuff after that because people did want to work with us, but we didn't really trust them. It was an interesting thing, because until you build up a relationship of trust, which takes some time, you feel that you're just gonna get used. And so we worked with Wolverhampton Art Gallery, we worked with Oriel Davis in Newtown, in Wales. And what was the third one... it was The Public, which is gone now. So that, they were three good galleries to work with. But we did things like, we wouldn't hand the budget to the gallery, we kept hold of the money because we couldn't trust them [laughs].

Mike Layward 15:22
And realised after that, that we had to really change our way of working with galleries that it was fine. But we went as the sort of knocking on the door, asking them to let us work with them. And we would bring all the money in, we would do everything. So it was quite like the poor of supplicants at this sort of cathedral's door. And I think we start to realise that we could, after what we learned from that, was that we could take more power. And we could actually start selecting galleries, which was a real change - that galleries would have to apply to work with us.

Colin Hambrook 16:00
In that early time, what what, what was the work that you were that you were putting in those galleries?

Mike Layward 16:08
So Noemi Lakmaier got Wolverhampton. We had Katherine and Aaron, Disabled Avant Garde, in Newtown, and they did their Camp DAG, which was disabled travellers camp in the park, which is--which was brilliant. The gallery really went for it. And the council let them build the camp over two days. And one of the workers there had a pony, so she bought the pony. They were allowed to have a fire, as long it was off the ground. So it---and they had a couple of caravans. So the premise of it was, I think, like for Catherine and Aaron, living in London, that if it had happened in a park in London, there would have been some petitions being written about the, you know, 'the gypsies in the park, get them out!' But because they were in rural mid-Wales, what was happening was travellers would come up saying, "how did you get permission to set your camp up here? Can you let us know who did that, because we always get chopped up!"

Mike Layward 17:17
So the sort---it was working opposite, that people were really interested but also being, this just letting...this, you know, just letting it happen in the park, that there was no petition started. But it was great. It was a great piece. And it was also we had about six or eight younger Welsh, disabled artists involved in the camp. So there was about 10 people in the camp.

Colin Hambrook 17:45
Yeah, yeah. The photos look, look wild. And Katherine and, and Aaron working together, we're always a kind of a force of nature, really.

Mike Layward 18:01
Yeah. I loved working with both of them. I just found them always...they were just great. They put in so much time and energy. And they---it's everything's built on humour. And I just think, that's what I've always loved. I can't really take stuff that's heavy and serious. There's something about humour which is such a subversive, artful [medium].

Colin Hambrook 18:28
I totally agree. I think, I think the visual arts are so rooted in this idea of patronage. And, you know, the canon of the history of art, the language gets very dense and impenetrable. Disability arts is about, you know, it's about real stuff in life. And if you can't put humour into that, then, then you know, what, what can.. what can you do?

Mike Layward 19:00
Yeah, I realised saying that can sound trite, because sometimes, what you need to talk about what you need to work on is, it's got a lot of anger, you know, anger from dispossession. And that's important to be able to put in there as well. And it may not be funny, because it's so such a powerful piece of feeling that you have---what you know, everybody's telling your story.

Colin Hambrook 19:30
How did your vision for DASH evolve over the years that you were there? Because that, that that sort of breaking down those barriers to the Visual Arts was, was key to that, I feel

Mike Layward 19:45
My first thought was [that I was] making it up as I went along, which there was definitely a feeling of that at times and, and trying not to be scattergun but also being experimental, trying out things that may not work or that they might be an idea that you will use again later. Like we did an accessible transport scheme to---there's a rural touring arts organisation in the area called Arts Alive, who do work in village halls. And we worke in one district of Shropshire providing transport for anyone who wanted to get there. And mostly it meant that people got a taxi from their home to the event and back again. And it was like really, and you could like be having a chauffeur. Because you know, if you wouldn't have gone to those events and paid for the taxi, because it would have probably cost you 20, 25 pounds, just for the taxi. And, but that didn't get continued.

Mike Layward 20:53
But it wasn't, we learned a lot about ideas like that. But one of the things I felt was, we could have been pushed down a strategic road and you know, been a representative disability representative and had lots of regional bodies. And I really didn't want that. It just would have felt for me like a real death knell, as us as an arts organisation. And it wasn't my skill. I can see that could have been important, but I knew that I did just got very frustrated by that sort of interminable meetings, and policy planning. So I think the vision was always about being artist-led. I think when it came into it, I'd always---as working as an artist, I'd always felt organisations were very self-centred. And the artists were like their servants, and usually weren't properly paid and conditions and all of that treatment was wasn't great. And I thought 'well, if I'm leading an organisation, I could---that's one thing I can definitely do, is make the artists the centre of the organisation and and try and have a proper pay rate and treat the artist properly, as proper workers in the organisation'.

Colin Hambrook 22:13
Tanya Raabe-Webber, I was first aware of her work, sort of, way back in the in the, in the late 90s. And you know, she was making extraordinary collage at that time, about disabled women's bodies and sexuality and, and control over women's bodies by--by the medical system and by the powers that be. And they were very powerful images. Tanya Raabe-Webber must be an artist that has been central to to Disability Arts Shropshire.

Mike Layward 22:56
Yeah, definitely. And I think Tanya, she was a great co-worker, and she, you know, her she was developing her own work, but she was also really keen on developing DASH. So I mean, she's a DASH trustees, she's a member of the board, has been quite a while. So yeah, but you really need critical friends, I think, all the time. Because none of us are perfect, but we think we are [laughs]. But we you can because you think you've got a great idea, or this process you're working on is good and but, just to have been challenged and step back and think 'Oh, okay, yeah, I haven't thought about that. I think, for it to have the confidence of DASH becoming a visual arts organisation, Tanya, I think, it was fundamental in that because she brought that, that true artist's knowledge. And then, as a disabled artist, the two things together brought that confidence, to move into the visual arts sector.

Colin Hambrook 24:02
And that there was always a participatory element to Tanya's work. She always brings in that participatory element and includes other less less experienced disabled artists in in you know, giving some experience and showcase and as she's great, absolutely.

Mike Layward 24:31
Yeah, I totally agree. I think it is really interesting talking about art school, because she must be...yeah, a handful, probably, of disabled visualise from the time she was training at art school [who] were you know, feeling that they could get in and that they could survive it. There's not that manyand that does make a difference. I could, I can really see. So to have someone there as a sort of a role model and a mentor. It's really cool.

Colin Hambrook 25:02
Can you, kind of give us some other, favourite kind of projects and moments in in your time?

Mike Layward 25:11
Yeah, well, Awkward Bastards was great. I mean, Awkward Basterds was another one that, the first one was great. And the second one, I think, was sometimes when you go back and try something, and try and take it further... It's almost like the...um, it didn't quite, it was too much. We crammed too much into the second one, but the first one was just right. It was like a proper middle. But the concept, as well, was to bring different diverse groups together, and different diverse sorts of artistic leaders seemed really important.

Colin Hambrook 25:56
And the concept behind Awkward Bastards was that, that as disabled people that we that we have to constantly kind of assert our, you know, our right to be. Do you want to say a bit more about that?

Mike Layward 26:15
Yeah, is that I always said that there's that feeling you get in a room, when you say, when either you start talking about the exclusion of disabled people or disabled artists, or to say, 'Oh, I define myself as a disabled person.' There's a sort of quietness that goes on---it's that awkwardness and, and sometimes it can feel as strong as, 'I wish you weren't in this room, actually. You've made our... comfort, you've just made us feel uncomfortable'. So it's that feeling if, however nice you are and how much you don't want to upset people, often, just by your presence, you're upsetting a comfortable structure. I guess it's that thing, isn't it? It's about the ableism of society, so that you will always be a disrupter to that. That mode. Unless it's really clearly stated [otherwise], this is not what this was about.

Colin Hambrook 27:19
Can you tell us a bit about who you brought to the first Awkward Bastards conference?

Mike Layward 27:26
Well, we had Gary as the compare, because it felt like to stop it being a a boring event that had just speaker, speaker, speaker, speaker and it starts to get mood-wearing, we needed Gary to come in and keep a sort of an energy going and a sort of humour in there. We had ah, David Turner, who is is a Professor in Swansea University, who just been on Radio Four, on their disability history programme. So he did the keynote speech around awkwardness and looked at particularly historic examples of awkwardness.

Mike Layward 28:14
We had Abid Hussain, me, Gary Robson and we had Tony Heaton did a whole piece. God, yeah. And, and then the afternoon starts to drift away...I can't remember what else we had.

Colin Hambrook 28:34
I didn't make the first one. But the second one at the MAC. I remember the vacuum cleaner. He was particularly awkward [laughs].

Mike Layward 28:42
Oh God! He was, he was! He wouldn't use the mic, so it was really hard for the interpreters. And then people, palentypists and it was hard to hear him.

Colin Hambrook 28:52
His work in, around, sort of reimagining the asylum and, you know, challenging psychiatry. I think it's been very, a really important progress really. And, you know, I think though, for for people like myself, who has come from a mental health background and coming into Disability Arts, there's always been a very strong hierarchy of impairment.

Colin Hambrook 29:23
And the barriers and challenges that we face as as coming from a survivor background, our have been very misunderstood and very difficult to to impregnate even, you know, in the Disability Arts world. And the vacuum cleaner has done a terrific job, I think, of challenging those barriers and of opening things up.

Mike Layward 29:54
Yeah, because I've met the vacuum cleaner the first time when I was at Leeds Uni doing my MA in Activism and Social Change. And one of the modules was bringing in different activists to run workshops with us. And he was brought in. And he worked. He'd been doing work with Reverend Billy from America who does sort of an anti-consumerist church. So he took us all out to do these different interventions in supermarkets and Primark. And it felt like being in somewhere like Berkeley University in 1968 - he had a real coherence about his ideas - but at that time, which would have been what, 2008, I think he was just finding it hard. I think he just didn't want to be boxed, and maybe still feels like he'd rather not be boxed, put in one box and be fined around that. But I think he feels he's definitely definition of who he is, is much more holistic.

Colin Hambrook 30:58
I can really see the value of that as well. You know, I think that disability arts to evolve, it has to become more nuanced, and, and and challenge itself continually. And, you know, the boxing of things is, it's really important to continually question what that's about?

Mike Layward 31:24
Well, one of the things that I sort of been looking at in these few months have been art school, is that I think all our struggles are interconnected. And they're not in competition, that they're all supporting each other. But it's hard to see that at times. Yeah, sometimes I think, particularly as disabled people, we can feel really invisible, in struggles that are happening. But I think it's always important to remember like all of the land, and environmental struggles are all our struggles as well, because we're dispossessed from the land in the same way. So that that sort of, much more interconnected approach, I think, is the sort of positive way for the future, because because we have to sort of hold our core of who we are and what was important for us and our basic requirements that we need for ourselves to bear to do what we're doing, but to not just be looking inward, interconnecting beyond ourselves.

Colin Hambrook 32:28
Going back to, you know, your your struggles, through your time at dash to kind of gain some foothold in the the gallery sector. How have you, you kind of made the argument to those gatekeepers?

Mike Layward 32:50
I think, you must know this one, but the people who want to hear what you've got to say, will listen, because they've thought about it. And if they haven't thought about it, they're open to the idea. And the people who don't want to hear it, won't hear it. So I think the statistics in the visual arts does speak for themselves what the Arts Council put out, you can see anyone who looks can see how few disabled people employed in any level in, in in galleries, but particularly when you get to the senior level, and how few disabled artists are shown.

Colin Hambrook 33:30
You've done a great job with the with the Future Curators programme. Yeah. How did those conversations evolve?

Mike Layward 33:40
So the planning for Future Curators was was started way earlier than usual, which I think has made the real difference in the fact that we for the last nearly a year we've been working on setting up the working process and structures with the six galleries. It's so different to the first one and it's been really unusual. So by the time it actually starts, it will just it will feel like a project that's run by a collective of galleries, not--not galleries that are working with DASH but DASH is leading, DASH is just the coordinator. I guess as manic as it seems to me like a great anarchist organisation that people feel they've got a voice in it, and that they they're helping to shape it. So what my hope with things like that is if truly people are engaged, then you should you hope that they would take that on and it will just be embedded in their organisation. So that it doesn't---it means that they're taken work on and they will go on into different ways that [will influence what] they will do in the future.

Colin Hambrook 34:57
I think that I was really inspired by that idea of putting disabled curators into galleries. That the whole notion of curating from a disability perspective, I thought that was genius. And it was so obvious as well, that the that they were, they were the gatekeepers, they were the ones who had the influence. And that was, that was the way to sort of penetrate that, that wall. But it, it feels, to me, that opening up, you know, art history and looking, in a more nuanced way, at how artist's work reflects barriers. And WAIWAV was - We Are Invisible, We Are Visible - The possibility there was really exciting, of tracing the work of Disability Arts and the art of protest back to the Dada movement.

Colin Hambrook 36:10
I think that is very exciting, that idea that we can frame the work in in a way that, the visual arts sector, that the gatekeepers will understand, because art school is so much about, you know, you have to learn this history of---basically, it's a history of collections and history of patronage. And it's not it's not about creativity, it's about a history of bondage to where the money is. And I think Disability Arts kind of, kind of framing itself around that, that history of the art of protest. That was that was---that was a brilliant move on your part.

Mike Layward 36:55
Yeah. I think what all you said there was just perfect, about the linking of an art movement, so that not that we we sort of latched on like a fleet to the back of data, but we said, look, there is real interconnections here. So like, if you want, if you want to treat a seriously, then you can see that we aren't just a group of people in a care in a residential home or a data centre. But this is a serious art form that has got roots that you can trace through, it's such an unknown what influence something like WAIWAV has, because I don't think you could ever really evaluate its impact. Because so much of it is unknown. I think one of the things as well that I sort of take away from WAIWAV was that the galleries didn't get paid a penny. And they knew they weren't going to get it wasn't like big, big sort of PR that was going to sort of, you know, like, they're gonna have an international artist so they can make...but they, those that were involved 90%, If not 95% of them, really went way beyond what I expected. I thought we were trying to keep their involvement to a minimum because they were getting no money and it feels like they're quite stretched. And they really, they went for it, because they love the idea as well.

Mike Layward 36:55
And I think the the audiences loved it as well. I went to the Towner in Eastbourne and saw Andrea Mindell set up making her goldwork piece in the foyer of the gallery , and so all the audiences were confronted and engaged with her immediately when walking through the front door.

Mike Layward 38:53
Yeah. And similar at the Ikon in Birmingham, with Aaron Williamson. People hung around for a long time, because in one hand, nothing was really happening. But it was so curious what was happening, that people, I thought a lot of people just would look in, and then go straight out. But people spent a lot of time there. And there was a place that was set up to take photographs. And yet people were engaged with it in its oddity.

Colin Hambrook 39:25
I loved the images of his dazzle costume! Yeah, it was beautiful thing as well as as being very, very funny and very, you know, having that historical connection as well to, to that framing of art. And, yeah, you have a really clever, clever piece.

Mike Layward 39:51
Yeah, you're the classic Aaron Williamson, isn't it? I mean, all the things that like when he did our promo film, when we had to do a presentation and he just dressed as the Invisible Man and sang that song. It's just, I just loved it [laughs]. And I knew that was a big part of why we got it because was very funny. He would like---it felt like for the people awarding the money, they were like, being offered this unknown treasure box that if they said yes, it could only be great.

Mike Layward 40:27
So yeah, what an amazing thing! I laughed, I laughed so much when I heard we were shortlisted, because I never thought that would happen. And then I laughed even more all day when we were told we got it, I thought, what have they done?! [laughs]. That doesn't usually happen to us in Disability Arts that we should get awarded what a massive prize of 150,000 pounds - it was like, wow!

Colin Hambrook 40:55
[laughs]. Yeah, real, a real, a real moment of joy. Yeah. And, and it was, it was, it was terrific project to be part of as well. And I really hope WAIWAV will have happens again, I hope it's something that we can think about collaborating, you know, with DASH and maybe other organisations within the Disability Arts sector, to find funding to make it happen. Mike, what's what's next for you? What, what are you...?

Mike Layward 41:33
I don't know. But I think I'm probably going to start making more live art pieces. But I'm really also into textiles. I really like silkscreen printing, and I'm teaching myself to use a sewing machine. And so, so I don't know.

Colin Hambrook 41:54
I really look forward to seeing some of the, some of the results. Are you going to blog or post some some of your creations?

Mike Layward 42:07
I should do that, shouldn't I?

Colin Hambrook 42:11
Take up a blog on DAO!

Mike Layward 42:13
Yeah, okay. Okay, I'll do that. I also should start an Instagram page. But because I'm such a---I'm just not a great, um. I've got much better actually, since I've been at college with digital work. But I'm just somehow...Yeah, some people are really good at creating their digital profile and making sure everything's on there and putting all that effort in. I'm a bit lazy, I think.

Colin Hambrook 42:43
I think it's wonderful that you've, you've, after all this time at DASH you've, you've gone back to being an artist, and the aspiration to be an artist is something that has never left me. I've spent all my life trying to get there.

Mike Layward 43:01
But it's hard to get the time, isn't it? And energy, when you've got your tasks in your job.

Colin Hambrook 43:10
And it's...it's such a, it's a, the thinking processes, the thinking hat you need. Yeah, it's, you know, you need, you need to sort of put the practical thinking processes aside and really go into more creative side of the brain. And it's not something that it's easy to switch on and switch off, I think.

Mike Layward 43:42
Yeah, and you need space and time for that. What's really interesting, I think, is in the difference of when we were younger. And because I'm working alongside 18 to 19 year olds who are doing their foundation, which is great to be in that mixed age of people in the fifties, and sixties, and people who are 18, 19. And that will change [minds] about people self-identifying, in their sort of gender and sexuality, and then how many Neurodiverse---we've always known that so many artists and art students will be Neurodivergent, but how it's big, more and more students acknowledge it and talk openly about it. Slight uncomfortableness when people talk about their...something that's so personal, but it's, it's definitely, it's happening. And I'm just thinking that wouldn't have happened, maybe even 10 years ago. So yeah, I find that really hopeful.

Colin Hambrook 44:49
That feels like a really good note to bring the conversation to a close. It's been a delight, as always, to talk to you Mike. And I hope that we can, we can continue our conversation from time to time. I look forward to, to engaging with you more. And a big thank you to all of our audience for listening in on the Disability And... podcast. And, um, any last words Mike?

Mike Layward 45:26
No, just to say, as ever, it's was really brilliant just chatting with you because it just feels like we've got so many things where we fire each other. Oh, yes. So, thank you.

Intro 45:44
Thank you for listening. We do hope you enjoy this episode of Disability And...please join us next month, when Mind the Gap's Associate Producer, Paul Wilshaw, chats with freelance Actor Rob Ewins about his success and some of the stories and experiences he's had over the years.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai